Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2016
This essay is inspired by an intriguing late sixteenth-century Catholic liturgical object, the Bosworth Hall burse. It commemorates a vision of the crucified Christ seen by the missionary priest (and later martyr) John Payne in Douai in 1575, which apparently dispelled a moment of doubt about the real presence in the consecrated eucharist. The incident is situated in the context of the heated Catholic and Protestant controversies about the doctrine of transubstantiation in post-Reformation England and against the backdrop of similar medieval miracles designed to counter disbelief, including the Mass of St Gregory and the miracle of Bolsena of 1263. The essay illuminates the persistence and transformation of anxieties about the sacred in the sixteenth century, considers the part they played in private and public crises of faith, and explores the mechanisms by which they were resolved. It also investigates how the memory of Payne's miraculous vision was crystallized in a material object.
1 Horne, Ethelbert, ‘The Bosworth Hall Burse’, Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 43 (1923), 80Google Scholar–1, 85.
2 On Payne and Gwyn, see Anstruther, Godfrey, The Seminary Priests: A Dictionary of the Secular Clergy of England and Wales 1558–1850, 1: Elizabethan 1558–1603 (Ware and Durham, 1968), 266Google Scholar–7, 140–1 respectively; Foley, B. C., ‘Bl. John Payne, Seminary Priest and Martyr – 1582’, Essex Recusant 2 (1960), 48–75Google Scholar; Kelly, James E., ‘Conformity, Loyalty and the Jesuit Mission to England of 1580’, in Glaser, Eliane, ed., Religious Tolerance in the Atlantic World: Early Modern and Contemporary Perspectives (Basingstoke, 2014), 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar–70, at 152–6. See also n. 7 below.
3 For Payne's activities after his arrival in England and arrest, see J. H. Pollen, ed., ‘Father Persons’ Memoirs (concluded)’, Miscellanea IV, Catholic Record Society 4 (London, 1907), 1–161, at 39, 47–9.
4 The burse came to Bosworth Hall through the Petre family and was in the possession of Mrs David T. Constable Maxwell in the 1970s, who loaned it to the Leicester Museum between 1949 and 1957. In 1977 it was once again at Bosworth Hall: see Durham, Ushaw College, Bernard Payne Papers, UC/P14/1/24–29. I am grateful to James Kelly for his assistance in facilitating access to this material.
5 See McCue, James F., ‘The Doctrine of Transubstantiation from Berengar through Trent: The Point at Issue’, HThR 61 (1968), 385–430Google Scholar; Macy, Gary, Treasures from the Storeroom: Medieval Religion and the Eucharist (Collegeville, MN, 1999)Google Scholar, especially chs 5, 8; Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar, ch. 1.
6 Febvre, Lucien, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais, transl. Beatrice Gottleib (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1982)Google Scholar. For recent revisionist work, see Arnold, John H., Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (London, 2005), 216Google Scholar–30; Alec Ryrie, ‘Atheism and Faith in Early Modern Britain’ (forthcoming). See also Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1973 edn), 198–206; Wootton, David, ‘Lucien Febvre and the Problem of Unbelief in the Early Modern Period’, Journal of Modern History 60 (1988), 695–730CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Unbelief in Early Modern Europe’, History Workshop 20 (Autumn 1985), 82–100; Edwards, John, ‘Religious Faith and Doubt in Late Medieval Spain: Soria circa 1450–1500’, P&P 120 (1988), 3–25Google Scholar; Reynolds, Susan, ‘Social Mentalities and the Case of Medieval Scepticism’, TRHS 6th ser. 1 (1991), 21–41Google Scholar.
7 At his trial Payne described his brother as having been ‘a very earnest Protestant’: Allen, William, A Briefe Historie of the Glorious Martyrdom of Twelve Reverend Priests: Father Edmund Campion and his Companions (London, 1908Google Scholar; first publ. 1582), 95.
8 ‘Memoriam fecit mirabilium suorum misericors et miserator Dominus. Quorsum haec? Ecce enim, ut haesitantem multorum parvulorum fidem corroboraret, non reliquit eos sine miraculo. Quod te nullo modo celare debeo, quia sacramentum regis abscondere bonum est, opera autem Dei revelare et confiteri honorificum est. In basilica Sancti Nicolai quae adhaeret templo D. Jacobi, dum quidam ex nostris prima sacra faceret, aderat inter caeteros Anglicanae nostrae societatis oeconomus, vir prudens, gravis, maturus, religiosus; cujus in mentem post primae speciei adorationem cum illa venisset cogitatio, ut si totus Christus in secunda quoque vini speciei contineretur iisdem quoque verbis quibus prima compellari et salutari posse videretur, jamque haeretet potius quam vacillaret, certissime vidit oculis penetrantibus elevatum calicem venerabilem formam quasi nudi hominis. Attonitus novitiate rei valdeque anxius, postquam confessario suo, Societatis vestrae gravissimo viro, id ita esse sanctissime affirmasset homo minime levis aut superstitosus, jamque ipse Alanus tantum habere momenti ad honorem Dei et nostrorum aedificationem existimasset ut palam pro concione declaraverit, tandem ita coeptum est celebrari hoc miraculum ut illius causa in ea ecclesia publice supplicatio fieret et ad populum sermo exhortatorius. Rident ist qui sancta omnia rident, et nisi quod palpari queat nihil volunt credere . . . denique cum Apostolus dicat, Charitas omnia credit; nos quid tentamus Deum ut audiamus, Modicae fidei quare dubitastis?’: Knox, T. F., ed., The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay: And an Appendix of the Unpublished Documents (London, 1878), 311Google Scholar.
9 Ibid.
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16 Possevino, Antonio, A Treatise of the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar, Called the Masse, transl. Thomas Butler (Louvain, 1570)Google Scholar, sig. A5v.
17 Bristow, Richard, A Briefe Treatise of diverse Plaine and Sure Ways to Finde out the Truthe in this Doubtful and Dangerous Time of Heresie in Conteyning Sundry Worthy Motives unto the Catholike Faith, or Considerations to Move a Man to Believe the Catholikes, and not the Heretikes (Antwerp, 1574)Google Scholar, sig.*3r and title page.
18 Pointz, Testimonies, fol. 5v. See also Harding, Answere, fols 126r–130v; Sander, Supper, fols 2r–v, 5v–6v, and bk 4; Heskyns, Parliament, bk 2, ch. 14; bk 3, ch. 8; Nowell, Confutation, especially fols 151r, 155r, 198r; Fulke, D. Heskins, 291.
19 Pointz, Testimonies, fol. 48v; Harding, Answere, fols 130v, 158v–162v.
20 See Sander, Supper, fols 86v–87r; Pointz, Testimonies, fols 10r, 14v; Heskyns, Parliament, sig. Aa1v. For a Protestant response to this point, see Fulke, D. Heskins, 217–22.
21 Pointz, Testimonies, fol. 92r, and see also fols 14v, 15r–16r. For Protestant emphasis on the evidence of the senses in refuting the real presence, see Nowell, Confutation, fol. 183v; Fulke, D. Heskins, 282.
22 Heskyns, Parliament, sigs Rr4r, T4v, M5r.
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25 For medieval speculations on this point, see Rubin, Corpus Christi, 54–8. Eamon Duffy comments that the custom of elevating the host emerged to counteract the view that the consecration of both elements was incomplete until the words of institution had also been said over the chalice: The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992), 95–6. See also Bede Camm's comments on the case: Stratton-on-the-Fosse, Downside Abbey, Bede Camm Papers (Files on the English Martyrs: Payne). The rite used was presumably that prescribed by the Tridentine missal, which had been issued in 1572: see Wandel, Eucharist, 237–9. I am grateful to Catherine Pickstock, Aidan Bellenger and Charlotte Methuen for their advice on this complex issue.
26 I owe this suggestion to Dermot Fenlon; Constable, Giles, ‘Nudus nudum Christum Sequi and Parallel Formulas in the Twelfth Century’, in Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History: Essays Presented to George Huntston Williams on the Occasion of his 68th Birthday, ed. Forrester Church, F. and George, Timothy (Leiden, 1979), 83–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 108–29. On medieval eucharistic miracles, see Corblet, Jules, Histoire dogmatique, liturgique et archéologique du sacrement de l'eucharistie, 2 vols (Paris, 1885), 1: 447–515Google Scholar; Browe, Peter, Die eucharistischen Wunder des Mittelalters (Breslau, 1938)Google Scholar; Snoek, G. J. C., Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist (Leiden, 1995), 310Google Scholar–19. For the story of ‘a priest who felt a doubt in saying the canon and beheld raw flesh’ in Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogue on Miracles (c.1220–35), see Shinners, John, ed., Medieval Popular Religion: A Reader (Peterborough, ON, 1999)Google Scholar, 90. See also Charles Zika, ‘Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany’, P&P 118 (1988), 25–64.
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34 Göttler, ‘Indulgenced Prints’, 69. I am grateful to Olive Millward and Ellie Jones for their assistance in obtaining a photograph of the Bishop Oldham reredos.
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37 Heskyns, Parliament, bk 3, ch. 42, at sig. Ooo6r; Fulke, D. Heskins, 462–7.
38 Bristow, Briefe Treatise, fols 15r–39v, at 16r, 38r–39v; Demaundes to be Proponed of Catholiques to the Heretikes (Antwerp [Douai], 1576), fols 29–32, 35–6.
39 Knox, ed., First and Second Diaries, 311.
40 See my ‘Miracles and the Counter-Reformation Mission to England', HistJ 46 (2003), 779–815, especially 805–8. For Protestant mockery of a seventeenth-century miracle involving Robert Persons, in which the host received by an English gentlewoman in Rome turned into a piece of ‘red flesh’, see Gee, John, The Foot out of the Snare (London, 1624)Google Scholar, sigs E4v–F1v.
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